QOLIVET: Enhancing the Quality of Life Impact of Services: Good Practice Guidelines

The guidelines presented here were developed within the QOLIVET project, funded by Erasmus + and aimed to improve the quality of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Community Care provision across Europe and raising its impact on the Quality of Life (QOL) of students and end-users.

The guidelines are informed by a systematic search of the peer reviewed and grey literature; research evidence; web resources; training courses; learning resources; Quality of Life (QOL) assessment tools; and VET evaluation tools. The aim was to identify any relevant evidence that could cast a light on useful ways in which QoL outcomes have been addressed in policy; valued by funders; measured by providers; detailed in programme specifications; included in quality guidelines and explored by researchers. Broadly, two separate searches were carried out. One focused on VET and the other explored community care services.

The focus of the QOLIVET project is upon the QoL impacts of programmes and delivery mechanisms in community care and vocational education and training (VET). The target audience is any one working in, or receiving, services, across the spectrum, from community care, independent living, and rehabilitation to services focused on developing pre-vocational and vocational knowledge and skills.

The QOLIVET approach is based on a model of QoL proposed by an international panel of experts which provides a lens through which the domains and dimensions of QoL relevant to community care and VET can be viewed [1].

The documents reviewed in the development of these guidelines span a wide range of contexts, participant characteristics, and service types. The aim is to bring together thinking that can be used to develop more effective service mechanisms to promote enhanced QoL and appropriate tools to be used across sectors and service types to measure outcomes and impact. The results and conclusions of this process can be reviewed in the QOLIVET Synthesis Report [2].

Background and Context

An important concept that underpins the QOLIVET approach is that services need to be viewed as operating along a pathway to inclusion and autonomy[3][4]. For some people, particularly those who are starting out in adult life, this pathway spans across a number of sectors that are frequently viewed from a system perspective as being distinct silos of policy and provision. An aspiration of the QOLIVET partners is that a seamless continuum of supports and interventions can bridge the gaps between the health and social care, and the VET sectors, in particular, in order to enable progression and successful transition. It is also acknowledged that there is an alternative pathway leading to exclusion and dependency which often originates within the VET sector and which can be reversed through collaboration between sectors.

The focus of the QOLIVET project is upon people embarking on adult life, although many of the concepts described are derived from, or equally relevant to, inclusive learning at primary and secondary education levels.

It is a prerequisite of an effective cross-sectoral system response that the underpinning framework is compatible with the intended impacts of both sectors and can be used to align priorities and monitor progress along the inclusion pathway. It is the contention of the QOLIVET partners that QoL impact has the potential to provide such a framework. This view is supported by the priority that QoL impact has accrued in both the health and social care, and VET sectors over the past two decades.

It is acknowledged that conceptions of QoL vary between the sectors. In the health and social care sector QoL has become a matter of high policy priority in the context of the drive towards community care from congregated living [5].In the VET sector, it is reflected in the increasing calls to broaden its scope beyond narrow technical and occupational competences to transversal skills, active inclusion and citizenship [6].

The good practice guidelines presented here are intended to integrate these two perspectives using the Schalock/Verdugo model of QoL referenced above [7].They are intended to reflect the foundational principles upon which a sustainable pathway to inclusion can be built and inform the other system capacity building mechanisms being developed by the QOLIVET project.

The Good Practice Guidelines are available here.